Chris Cornell - Scream

I tried.

I really did, Chris.

The ill-fated collaboration between Chris Cornell and Timbaland is finally in stores. A few weeks ago, Main Street Music passed me a copy to review. As a fan of Cornell, I was eager to hear the album and give it a fair shot. I realize that it wasn't going to be a Soundgarden, Audioslave or traditional Cornell solo-effort. I knew this was going to be something totally different.

I was willing to give Cornell the benefit of the doubt. After all, I had downloaded a few of the songs from iTunes and I liked a few of them very much.

Now, when I first I heard Cornell was collaborating with Timbaland, I thought, "Well, if Timbaland can help Cornell take his traditional rock howl and give his some songs some shape, direction...we might have something." After all, Timbaland is a great producer and an honest-to-god hit-making machine. If he could have helped Cornell find the hook in his songs, he might have been able to bring out the best in Cornell - whose career was at a crossroads after a luke-warm reception to "Carry On".

See, that is what would have worked best.

For this to work, Cornell needed to convince his core audience that he didn't trade substance for style. If Timbaland came to the sessions and said to Cornell, "You have some good songs. We won't change your style or sound. Instead, I am going to make these songs 'pop'." Timbaland should have focused on surrounding Cornell's voice with the familiar and thrown the audience some curveballs to keep them on their toes.

This might have been an interesting, fresh approach.

Instead, you get Timbaland making Cornell into something he isn't. What's worse is, the listener is left asking himself, "What was Cornell thinking?" Even worse, "Was Cornell thinking at all?" I don't believe that Cornell has to do what is expected of him. But, this is more than just a radical departure. It just doesn't work, on many levels.

Hearing Cornell's herculean voice plod its way through synthesizers and sequencers takes most of the soul out of the songs. Cornell's voice begins to sound like a very insignificant part of each song. When his voice does cut through, the songs are just weak. The album begins to sound like the piped-in music that puts dance beats to rock songs at a health club.

There are certain moments where the production is stripped back enough that Cornell's voice helps to strike a more soulful balance. Songs like "Long Gone", Ground Zero", and the title track "Scream" achieve a certain emotional gravity that the rest of the album just doesn't muster. Even the appearance of Justin Timberlake on "Take Me Alive" doesn't take the song over the top. Instead, it just plods along and repeats the chorus after Cornell warbles something about...well, not being taken alive.

Interestingly enough, the cover of the album features Cornell smashing a guitar as a symbolic gesture. One would assume that he traded it for Timbaland's synthesizers. Well, you might want to patch that guitar back up again, Chris. You are going to need it to win back the legions of fans that jumped ship on you.

It's not that the musical direction you've chosen is a problem. Hell, I like anything as long as it moves me. And, there it is. That is the problem with this album in a nutshell. It's just that the songs do not sustain any momentum - and it doesn't matter who produced the album. Change is only effective if the finished product is a winner. In this case, change hurts worse because "Scream" just isn't very good.

Having said that, I am still a fan of Cornell's and I look forward to seeing where he goes from here. I wouldn't even mind if he worked with Timbaland again. But, "Scream" can't decide what it wants to be. Is it the album of a rock-singer changing his sound? Or, is it a dance/pop album that features a great rock singer? In the quest to make it a little of both, the album fails to achieve any momentum that would make it compelling to the listener.